1 M SALMONIDiE. 



ot Otsego will remain the Otsego Bass for ever; since, 

 although nothing is easier than to explain, and even to prove, 

 that the fish is in no respect a Bass, when he who has been 

 accustomed so to call it, but who is open to conviction, inquires, 

 If I must not call him Bass, what is his name ? — there is no 

 answer to the foregoing, but that he is a Coregonus of the 

 Salmon family. 



To return, however, to the Greatest Lake Trout, Mackinaw 

 Salmon, or Namaycush — it is also called, in common with all 

 the other large Lake Trout, Salmon Trout ; but this is too 

 absurd even to be admitted as a provincial synonyme, since the 

 Salmon Trout is a Sea Trout, and is, moreover, found on the 

 eastern shores of this continent. This is probably the largest 

 of the Salmon family in the known world ; hence, I have ven- 

 tured, on my own authority, to designate him as the Greatest 

 Lake Trout, in order to distinguish him, not only from the 

 Siskawitz, and the Salmo Confinis of Dekay, but also from the 

 Common Trout {Salmo Fontinalis), when taken of large size in 

 the small inland lakes. 



The average weight of this monstrous fish in Lake Huron is 

 stated by the fishermen to be seventeen pounds, but they are 

 constantly taken of forty pounds weight, and not at all unfre- 

 quently of sixty or seventy. 



It is stated by Dr. Mitchil, that at Michilimackinac they have 

 been known to attain the enormous weight of one hundred and 

 twenty pounds, with which the dimensions of the same fish as 

 described by La Hontan, in his Mem. de V Amerique, would seem 

 to agree — " Les plus grosses Truites,'' says he, " des lacs ont cinq 

 pieds et demi de longueur et unpied de diametre" — but at the pre- 



